


Refugees

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A refugee using a dead man's name dredges up the past for Brienne at Winterfell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Refugees

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Miss_M for her always helpful beta comments.

Flames lick across the dark sky, red and gold and green. The aurora, Lady Sansa named it the first night they saw it. Nothing to fear. The Southron members of their party muttered that there should not be fire in the sky while the world is frozen. 

They say that snow falls as far south as the Citadel, a winter colder than any in living memory, and the aurora is visible even in King’s Landing. Brienne does not linger on that thought. She will never see the Red Keep again, and her time there is best forgotten, buried deep in the snow like the corpses they buried before they understood the need for pyres. 

Brienne is grateful for the distraction when a guardsman approaches her post outside Lady Sansa’s door. 

“Milady, there are refugees at the South Gate,” he says quietly. 

“How many?” Brienne asks, curious why refugees should require her attention. She scrutinizes the guard. Brynden came north from the Vale with them eight moons ago, but he is still barely a man, perhaps fifteen years old. He should be squiring at the Redfort, not guarding the Lady of Winterfell. 

Refugees arrive at Winterfell’s gates frequently, and the castle can no longer accommodate most of them. Lady Sansa tried to feed them all at first, sheltering those who did not pose a threat, but supplies dwindle as the winter drags on. The castle still lacks a smith, and the guards query each refugee hoping to find one. Those without a useful trade are offered a hot meal and a night’s shelter in the stables or near the hearth in the Great Hall, then sent away in the morning. 

“Only two tonight. A man and a boy,” Brynden replies. “Neither a smith.” 

Brienne nods. “They can sleep in the Great Hall.”

Brynden, a thin youth with a mop of ginger hair, fidgets a moment before gazing up into his captain’s eyes. Worry creases his brow. “There is one odd thing about them, milady. I would not trouble you, but...”

Brienne frowns, her hand falling to the cold steel at her side. “Tell me.” She has learned to trust her guards’ instincts despite their youth. They warned her about the last smith who walked through the gate, a man with a disturbing interest in children. Brienne gave him a more merciful end than he deserved.  

Brynden swallows hard. “The man calls himself Hyle Hunt.”

The name hits her like a mailed fist, stealing her breath. “Hyle Hunt is dead.”

The guard nods. “And he knew that name was safe to use.” 

As they rode north, Lady Sansa’s party encountered corpses strung up on the trees. To make them understand the danger, Brienne told her lady’s young guards about Hyle Hunt and Podrick Payne. She has not spoken their names since arriving at Winterfell. 

Brienne takes a shaky breath, her hand falling away from her sword. “Put them in the empty chamber in the Guards’ Hall. I will look in on them later. If need be, we can lock them up in there.” 

She closes her eyes for a moment, the swollen, blackened faces as clear in her mind as the night she found the bodies, swinging gently and dusted with snow. She buried Hyle and Pod in that cairn, surely. “Did the boy give a name?” 

Brynden shakes his head. “The man called him ‘son.’”

Brienne forces herself to stand up straight, her elbows brushing against the warm stone wall behind her. “Thank you, Brynden.”

The guard smiles, standing a bit straighter himself as he walks away. Brynden is among the oldest of Sansa’s guards. Lady Sansa would not accept the service of anyone who took coin from Lord Baelish, and the older knights balked at taking orders from Brienne. Winterfell’s guards are green, but they are not knights of summer. They are not knights at all, but neither is their captain. 

There were boys in the Hollow Hill too, no older than these guards. Renly’s shade, the smith who killed Biter, was of an age with them, and there were younger children in the cave. Which man might have survived to travel north? There was a Northerner there, though Brienne cannot say if he lived. 

For a moment she allows herself to picture Hyle and Pod, thin and cold but living, the corpses dressed in their clothing only a cruel ruse. That way lies madness. She lost them as surely as she lost Renly, Lady Catelyn, and Jaime, evidence of her weakness and her folly. 

The Lannisters fell not long after Lady Sansa reached Winterfell half a year ago. Queen Cersei’s execution mirrored Ned Stark’s, a spectacle on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor. Jaime spent half his life reviled for killing Aerys, only to burn with his king when Daenerys Targaryen set her dragons on the Red Keep. 

When another guard arrives to relieve Brienne at her post much later, she goes to the Guards’ Hall. Her quarters are near Lady Sansa’s, but she will not be able to sleep until she sees the new arrivals. 

Brienne opens the heavy door, one hand poised to draw her sword if needed, but the refugees do not stir. She looks for weaponry, armor, any evidence of ill intent, before allowing herself to look at their faces. 

A dead man sleeps restlessly in the narrow bed, a dead boy on a pallet by the hearth. 

Shaken, Brienne takes a seat near the window and waits. She does not rest, nor does she watch the sky. She watches the firelight playing across their cold-chapped cheeks, cracked lips, and dirty hair. She listens to them breathe. 

Brienne has no idea what she will say when they wake. She could not find the words when they parted, and now so much has changed. Did they know Brienne was here or stumble upon her by chance? Smallfolk in the North know there is a Stark in Winterfell again, but ravens arrive infrequently and Sansa does not always share news from the South. 

Her eyes grow heavy, and she jerks upright when the bed creaks.

He is sitting up, staring at Brienne. Dark circles shadow his eyes, his cheekbones sharp in his bearded face. 

“Brienne?” Uncertainty and concern fill his voice. 

The gods have taunted her every night for nearly half a year. Crimson, gold, and green burning in the aurora, burning in her nightmares. This man is not golden; he is dirty and clad in brown roughspun. But he is unquestionably Jaime. 

Alive and unburnt, Tommen slumbers by the hearth.

“How…” Brienne can scarcely breathe, much less speak.

Jaime crosses the room and sinks to his knees before her, covering her hand with his. She wonders how Brynden failed to notice his missing right hand. 

Jaime is warm and solid and her breath catches. A tear splashes onto the back of his hand, and she wipes her damp cheeks with her sleeve. Brienne hadn’t realized she was crying as she kept watch over them.

Jaime smiles, too proud of himself not to share this. “The Red Keep is riddled with secret passages. The Dragon Queen might have preferred to watch me roast like Rickard Stark, but she will have to live with disappointment.” 

Brienne allows herself to look into Jaime’s eyes. "Hyle Hunt?"

A shadow crosses his face, and he drops her hand. Jaime knows better than anyone how deeply that name would wound her. He helped Brienne bury them, and reminded her often that blaming herself would not bring them back. "Do you wish I was Hunt?"

"No." The word bursts from her without thought.

Jaime grins. "Good. I’d hate to think we spent five moons dodging bloody sparrows to find you pining for him.” 

“I mourned you, Jaime.” Brienne looks at his frayed tunic, the threads of silver in his beard, anywhere but his eyes. 

“Then where is your sword?” Jaime’s voice is soft, sliding through her armor as easily as the Valyrian steel she does not carry. 

Her hand drops to the blade at her hip, simple steel from the armory. “I buried it in the godswood.” 

The day the raven arrived from King’s Landing, Brienne lit candles in the sept, but they brought her no comfort. So she buried Oathkeeper in the snow beneath the heart tree as she had not been able to bury him. Her memories of him were not buried so easily. 

“A waste of Valyrian steel,” Jaime chides. 

He must know what it meant to carry Lannister steel here, the whispers Brienne heard and pretended did not hurt her. She did not bury Oathkeeper because of them. Brienne could not bear the constant reminder of him. Jaime does not understand, and Brienne will not show him the depth of her grief. She is still uncertain if the bond between them, unspoken but keenly felt, is anything more than her own fancy. 

“Why have you come here?” she forces herself to ask. 

Brienne expects a clever remark, but Jaime is silent. His eyes hold the same intensity as when they lingered by the Kingsroad, barely speaking but unwilling to part until it was nearly dark. A fortnight together moving east through the Riverlands had burned away much of Jaime’s anger at her betrayal, but she could not forgive herself so easily. When Brienne finally mounted her horse and turned toward the Vale, Jaime swore that they would see each other again. She’d wanted to believe him but didn’t dare allow herself. Why should he seek her out now, even if he could? 

Jaime leans forward and kisses her softly, and after a moment Brienne kisses him back. He smiles against her broad mouth, his fingers tangling in her hair as he kisses her again. 

This was what Brienne wanted every night as they moved toward the Kingsroad, cursed herself for seeing something impossible in his smiles and his eyes. 

Jaime finally breaks the kiss, just as breathless as she is. “I should have done that a long time ago. I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” Even if Brienne never sees him again, she can’t imagine ever regretting anything about that kiss. 

Jaime glances back over his shoulder at his sleeping son, and his eyes are filled with sadness when he meets her gaze again. “I know we can’t stay here.”

He’s right, and that knowledge has weighed on her since the moment Brienne saw their faces. Tommen looks so much like his parents, Sansa will surely recognize him. He was a gentle child, another victim of his brother’s cruelty, and there is a chance that Sansa will allow him to stay at Winterfell. 

But Sansa’s mercy will not extend to the man who crippled her brother, no matter that he sent Brienne to protect her. Jaime would not survive long alone in the frigid North. It’s a miracle he and Tommen made it here at all. 

Jaime is still watching Brienne, waiting for her to speak.

She opens her mouth, intending to confirm his fears, but stops. “No, but there might be another way.”

Arya Stark may still be out there somewhere, and Brienne considered leaving Winterfell to search for her moons ago. The ship’s captain who brought them to White Harbor remembered a fierce girl with a castle-forged sword who traveled to Braavos, where winter’s grip is not so strong. Sansa is as safe as she can be behind the walls of Winterfell. She does not need Brienne’s protection, and may permit her captain of guards to take Jaime with her to complete their quest. 

Brienne sees the questions in his eyes, but she doesn’t want to raise his hopes only for Sansa to dash them in the morning. So Brienne pulls Jaime close, kisses him again, pushes everything else from her mind. Let the sky burn and the earth freeze. Everything she wants is within these walls.  

 


End file.
